As I walked home from my bus stop yesterday, three young men blocked the stairs I walk towards my house. My first reaction was to look behind me, next to have my phone ready, then to feel my swiss knife at my fingertips, there, ready, at the bottom of my purse. As I looked closer, however, I saw familiar signs of boys playing "men," of young men feeling the surge of testosterone, of kickn in the street because they feel that’s what friends do, chill together. It wasn’t that I wasn’t concerned for my well being as a woman, it’s just that in a moment, I recognized that fear and longing for the infamous credibility. These boys were more interested in this place as their territory than they were about me, a woman dressed professionally and looking tired. As I walked by I said, “Good even young gentlemen,” and they responded, good evening... I heard giggles moments later and something about booty. I was right; I have seen aspirations of “gangs” before.I recently saw an NBC report called America Now: Faces Against Violence (Chicago's South and West Sides have become ground zero for an all-American problem: Kids killing kids) and it reminded me of Cali in so many ways. I was saddened to see that some things rarely change. I was sad to see even here, in a nice Seattle neighborhood, the few young brothers of color I saw on that stairway, longing to feel empowered, to feel respected, to feel like they belong, and ultimately, just looking for love and acceptance.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38579962/ns/dateline_nbc-america_now/
So today I post a poem from my thesis completed last year, and hopefully in the works for publishing mid next year (http://digitalcommons.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI1465203/). It’s in both English and Spanish. Here is a link to an article I was quoted in regarding this “code switching” (http://borderzine.com/2008/12/lost-in-adaptation/).
I post it because even here, in the green and pristine Northwest, young men of color, my brothers, are looking for a stairway out.
PS: Thanks to the Big Q for inspiring me to write what had been thumping around in my brain for about a week now. See? Inspiration goes both way...
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En la cocina
Esas cosas o su memoria están en los libros These writings or the memory of them are in books
que custodio en la torre. which I guard in the tower.
-Jorge Luis Borges, “El guardian de los libros”
“FEE NOTICE”
a notice from the Stanislaus County library demanded,
perhaps about bird migration disruption
trucha, he liked birds-
maybe on wood crafts, carpentry,
he was building a speaker box for when he could get a car-
or Cliff Notes on the Odyssey and the Iliad
he read it for Language Arts class where he penciled
1962 Impalas, a Sagrado Corazón and Aztec queens
with big chichis and lush Quetzal feathers.
“DUE: $56.00”
books borrowed because he had none at home
no shelves for books except his mother’s double
phone-book size Bible kept behind a wood and glass case
with the glossy painted clay dishes from Michoacán
a set of shot glasses with the word “Morelia”
collection of recuerdos, a pink slipper with lace
mini champagne glasses, ribbons hot glued
to a plastic heart-shaped vase
tiny niños Jesús with a gold stamped lettered
ribbon around the foot.
“YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE MATERIALS”
but Doña Roberta didn’t know, neither did her mother
una viejita whose right eye was white as if the morning
Central Valley fog were stuck in there,
only the sun never melted it away;
His sister didn’t know either.
She always had large purple hickies
around her neck and wore her novio’s
clicka colors, those pelones who hung out
smoking mota, bumping oldies about
angel babies and smile now, cry later.
“FINAL NOTICE: RETURN INDICATED ITEMS…”
finally Don Manuel said he cleaned the glass case,
the wall, table, chair but threw the library books away
because of the splatter
bone fragments on them like bugs on a bumper.
Big E, Ernesto, that homie, carnal since the fifth grade
he secretly liked school, always did good, even got a ribbon once
whose brother, cousin, niece were still in la pinta,
he wanted to be the first to graduate from high school-
was studying at the kitchen table,
he shared a room and had no desk-- the kitchen table a tower
of books stacked around, never high enough to
keep out telenovela cries
street bass, sirens, just enough to hear his
thoughts, solve right triangles and the Iliad,
when it happened;
in through the back bursting through his chest
another in the mandible, disjointing the jaw
blowing the ear, bits of red and white
soaking into each borrowed page.
copyright 2009, veronica guajardo
